The GROW Coaching Model for Managers

What Is the GROW Model?

The GROW model is a simple structure for a coaching conversation. Instead of telling someone what to do, you ask a series of questions that take them from what they want, through what’s really going on, to a plan they’ve come up with themselves.

It’s popular with managers for a practical reason: it’s easy to remember in the middle of a real conversation. Four letters, four stages, and a natural order. You don’t need a coaching qualification to use it, and it works as well in a ten-minute chat by the kettle as in a planned hour.

The point isn’t the acronym. The point is that people are far more likely to follow through on an action they chose than one they were handed. GROW gives you a way to hold back your own answer long enough for theirs to appear. If you want to build the skill properly with someone to practise with, that’s what our leadership coaching is for.

What Does GROW Stand For?

GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will. Some versions call the last stage Way forward. Each stage has its own job.

G: Goal

What does the person want? This can be the goal for the conversation (“I want to leave with a plan for the rota”) or a bigger aim (“I want to be ready for a team leader role in a year”). A clear goal stops the conversation drifting. If you skip it, you’ll often find yourselves solving the wrong problem.

R: Reality

What’s happening now? This is where you get the facts: what they’ve tried, who’s involved, what’s getting in the way, and what’s already going well. Good reality questions are specific and non-judgemental. Many people find the answer starts to appear here, simply because they’ve said the situation out loud.

O: Options

What could they do? The aim is to get several options out before judging any of them. “What else?” is the most useful question in this stage, and it’s worth asking at least twice. Hold your own idea back until theirs are on the table.

W: Will (or Way Forward)

What will they actually do, and when? This is where an interesting conversation becomes a change in behaviour. You’re after one or two specific actions, a date, any obstacles they can see coming, and how you’ll check in. Without this stage, GROW is just a nice chat.

Where Did the GROW Model Come From?

The GROW model is usually credited to three business coaches: Graham Alexander, Alan Fine and Sir John Whitmore, who developed it in the 1980s. Accounts differ on exactly who contributed what, and the three went on to use and teach the model in their own ways, so most writers credit all three together.

It became widely known through Whitmore’s book Coaching for Performance (Nicholas Brealey Publishing), which has been through several editions and is still one of the standard books on workplace coaching. Whitmore argued that the questions matter less than the intent behind them: the coach is there to raise the person’s awareness and their sense of responsibility for what happens next. The GROW sequence is the framework that sits on top of that.

That’s worth remembering. GROW was never meant to be a script. It’s a map you can glance at to see where you are in the conversation.

If you want to read further, the two books most often recommended alongside each other are Whitmore’s Coaching for Performance and Myles Downey’s Effective Modern Coaching (LID Publishing).

How to Run a GROW Coaching Conversation

You can use GROW in a planned coaching session, at the end of a one-to-one meeting, or when someone pops their head round the door with a problem. The steps are the same.

1. Check it’s a coaching moment. Does the person have, or could they find, the answer themselves? If the building’s on fire, or there’s a policy they must follow, tell them. Coaching is for situations where their thinking will produce a better result than your instruction.
2. Ask permission. Something as simple as “Can I help you think this through, rather than just give you my answer?” changes the tone. People who expect to be told what to do can find a sudden stream of questions unsettling.
3. Agree the goal. What do they want from the conversation? Write it down if it helps.
4. Explore the reality. Ask, then listen. Summarise what you’ve heard before moving on.
5. Generate options. Ask “What else?” until they run dry. Then ask which ones they like and why.
6. Agree the way forward. Get a specific action, a date, and the support they need from you.
7. Follow up. Put the check-in in the diary. Coaching that’s never followed up teaches people it doesn’t matter.

GROW Model Questions for Each Stage

You only need one or two questions per stage. These are good starters.

Goal questions

• What would you like to get out of this conversation?
• If this went really well, what would be different?
• How will you know you’ve got there?
• How much of this is in your control?

Reality questions

• What’s happening at the moment?
• What have you tried so far? What happened?
• Who else is involved, and what do they think?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you now?

Options questions

• What could you do?
• What else? And what else?
• What would you do if you had no constraints at all?
• What would someone you respect do in your shoes?

Will (way forward) questions

• So what will you do, and when?
• What might get in the way? What will you do if it does?
• What support do you need from me?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you to that?

The free conversation cards at the end of this guide have ten questions for each stage, plus opening and closing lines and a planner.

GROW Model Example: A Manager Coaching a Team Member

Illustrative example. The people and details are invented to show how the stages fit together.

Priya leads a small customer service team. Dan, one of her team, has handed in the weekly complaints report late three weeks running. Priya could tell him to start it earlier. Instead she uses GROW in their one-to-one.

Goal

Priya: You mentioned Friday’s report has been a pain. What would you like to happen?

Dan: I’d like to get it in by Friday lunchtime without staying late on Thursday.

Reality

Priya: Talk me through last Thursday. Where did the time go?

Dan: Most of the afternoon was chasing the billing team for their figures. The writing only takes an hour once I’ve got everything.

Priya: So the hold-up is the figures, not the report itself?

Dan: Yes. When I think about it, it’s the same every week.

Options

Priya: What could you do about that?

Dan: Ask billing earlier. Or use last week’s figures and update them. Or just accept it’ll be Friday afternoon.

Priya: What else?

Dan: I suppose I could ask whether billing can send them automatically. Their system must produce them anyway.

Will

Priya: Which of those will you go with?

Dan: I’ll email billing on Monday asking for figures by Tuesday, and ask about the automatic report at the same time.

Priya: What might get in the way?

Dan: They might ignore me.

Priya: What would help with that?

Dan: If you could mention it to their manager, that would help.

Priya: I can do that on Monday. Let’s look at how it went at our next one-to-one.

Notice what Priya didn’t do. She didn’t diagnose the problem, suggest the answer or lecture Dan about deadlines. She asked short questions, summarised once, and offered one concrete piece of help at the end. Dan came up with a better fix (the automatic report) than she would have suggested, and it’s his plan, so he’s far more likely to do it.

Coaching vs Telling: When to Use Each

Coaching isn’t always better than telling. Good managers move between the two depending on the person and the situation, which is the same idea behind choosing between management styles.

Use telling when…	Use coaching when…
There’s a safety risk, a legal rule or a fixed policy	There’s more than one reasonable way forward
The person is new and doesn’t know the basics yet	The person knows the work and could find the answer
It’s urgent and there’s no time to explore	There’s time for the person to think
You need one consistent answer across the team	You want the person to own the decision
The decision has already been made above you	You want them to build confidence and judgement

A useful test: if you’d be happy with any of three or four answers the person might come up with, coach. If only one answer is acceptable, tell them, and explain why.

Most new managers default to telling because it’s quicker and it’s how they got promoted: they were the one with the answers. The shift from doing to developing is one of the hardest parts of becoming a manager, and it’s a theme we come back to in management vs leadership.

When GROW Isn’t the Right Tool

GROW is useful, but it isn’t the answer to every conversation. Leave it on the shelf when:

• Someone is upset or in crisis. A person who’s just had bad news or is struggling with their mental health needs you to listen, not to work through four stages. Get them the right support first. HSE’s Stress Talking Toolkit is a better starting point for conversations about pressure at work.
• It’s a conduct or capability issue. If you’re dealing with a formal performance or disciplinary matter, follow your organisation’s procedure and get HR involved. You can still ask good questions, but don’t dress a formal process up as coaching.
• The answer isn’t theirs to choose. If the decision’s been made, say so. Asking “What options can you see?” when there’s only one is manipulative, and people notice.
• They don’t have the knowledge yet. You can’t coach someone into knowing a process they’ve never been shown. Teach first, then coach them as they get more confident.
• You’ve already decided what they should do. If you’re steering towards your own answer with leading questions, stop and tell them your view. It’s more honest and quicker.

Common Mistakes Managers Make With GROW

These are the traps that turn a coaching conversation into something else.

1. Skipping the goal. Jumping straight into “So what’s the problem?” often means solving the wrong one. Spend a minute agreeing what the conversation is for.
2. Rushing reality. It’s tempting to move to solutions as soon as you think you understand. Ask one more question than feels comfortable.
3. Leading questions. “Have you thought about asking billing earlier?” is advice with a question mark on the end. If you have an idea, offer it openly after theirs: “Would it help if I added one?”
4. Asking “why” too much. “Why did you do that?” can sound like an accusation. “What led to that?” or “What was going on?” gets the same information without the defensiveness.
5. Filling the silence. A pause after a good question usually means the person is thinking. Wait.
6. Ending without a commitment. “Let me know how you get on” isn’t a way forward. Get a specific action and a date.
7. Never following up. If you don’t ask how it went, people learn that the conversation didn’t matter.
8. Treating it as a script. Real conversations jump around. If the options all sound weak, go back to the goal. If the reality turns out to be different, revisit the options. That’s normal.

GROW Model Variations: T-GROW and Others

Because GROW is simple, people have adapted it. Two variations are worth knowing.

T-GROW

T-GROW adds a Topic stage at the start. Before you set a goal, you explore what the person wants to talk about and why it matters now. It’s associated with the coach Myles Downey, who sets it out in his book Effective Modern Coaching (LID Publishing).

T-GROW suits one-to-ones well, because people often arrive with a broad worry (“It’s the new system”) rather than a goal. Spending a few minutes on the topic helps them narrow it to something they can act on.

GROW With Way Forward

Some coaches use Way forward instead of Will for the last stage. It’s the same idea: turn the chosen option into a specific next step. Use whichever word makes more sense to your team. “Will” puts the emphasis on commitment; “way forward” sounds less like a test.

Not Always in Order

In practice, the stages don’t have to run in a strict line. You might start with reality because that’s what the person wants to talk about, then set the goal once the situation is clearer. The model is a map, not a set of rails.

How to Build a Coaching Habit in Your Team

One great coaching conversation won’t change much. A habit will. Here’s how to make it stick.

• Start small. Pick one question to use this week whenever someone brings you a problem: “What have you tried so far?” It slows you down enough to stop you jumping in with the answer.
• Build it into one-to-ones. Regular one-to-one meetings are the natural home for coaching. Keep the status updates short so there’s time for a GROW conversation on whatever matters most to the person.
• Coach the small stuff too. You don’t need a big issue. Coaching someone through how to plan their week builds the same habit as coaching them through a career decision.
• Ask for feedback on your own coaching. HSE’s Line Manager Competency Indicator Tool, developed with the CIPD and Investors in People, includes statements such as giving more positive than negative feedback and providing regular opportunities for your team to speak one to one. It’s a useful self-check.
• Get coached yourself. It’s much easier to coach well once you’ve felt what good coaching is like from the other side. Many managers find a few sessions with an external coach changes how they run their own conversations.
• Train your managers together. When a whole group of managers learns the same model, they share a language and hold each other to it. Our management training covers coaching skills for managers alongside one-to-ones, feedback and delegation.

What to Do Next

This week, pick one conversation where you’d normally give the answer. Before you do, ask three questions: “What do you want to happen?”, “What have you tried?” and “What could you do?” Then stop talking and see what happens.

Download the free conversation cards below and keep them on your desk for your next few one-to-ones. If you’re a manager or leader who wants to work on your own coaching and leadership with an experienced, confidential sounding board, take a look at our leadership coaching.